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Bloodletting (or blood-letting) is the withdrawal of often small quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were regarded as "humors" that had to remain in proper balance to maintain health. It was the most common medical practice performed by physicians from antiquity until the late 19th century, a span of almost 2,000 years. The practice has now been abandoned for all except a few very specific conditions. It is conceivable that historically, in the absence of other treatments for hypertension, bloodletting could sometimes have had a beneficial effect in temporarily reducing blood pressure by reducing blood volume. However, since hypertension is very often asymptomatic and thus undiagnosable without modern methods, this effect was unintentional. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients.

16th century medicine sure was interesting...Being an albino, a former runt of the litter and blessed with particularly poor immune system, Machete probably had to go though a variety of illnesses during his lifetime. At the point he was a cardinal he'd probably be able to afford a personal doctor who would be in charge of dealing with his changeable health and regular bleeding sessions.

No sir, he's not liking it.

Renaissance clothing and furniture? I don't even know. Usable references were at bay so I just improvised something that might fit the setting. And the doctor is a Bracco Italiano, never drawn any dogs of that breed before. Rather striking looking canines.

Seeing this image, especially with the blood flowing down his wrist, makes my own wrists feel weird. Kinda like the feeling I sometimes get whenever I see a scene in a film where a character hurts their wrists or something. OmO

But this an awesome picture. I love Machete's expression, as usual. He always has wonderful expressions in your pictures, but in this one he looks like he's probably gonna be sick. XD Poor fellow. Keep up the great work.

I once saw somewhere that they used leeches for bloodletting too. Yuck, I wouldn't have liked to have been sick during the Renaissance :'DI love the expression on Machete, you portrayed the whole uneasiness thing very well.

Very stricking! Blood-letting was used to cure almost everything, also by ancient romans. However, I really like it. I'm Italian, but even here there the bracco italiano is not very known, which is a pity, since it's a beautiful dog and great for hunting or just as a pet dog.

Ah yes, trepanning. It's probably older procedure than bloodletting, practiced even in the prehistoric times. I don't think they were aware of such thing as brain tumors, but the purpose of the drilling was to let out "evil spirits" that resided in the head. Interesting medicine nonetheless :'3

Whoah,this is very interesting,I liked to know about it.But let me tell ya,when I saw this for the first time (this art) I thought it was like a parody of someone doing nails. xDAgain,it looks like hurts, but the impression is that his face is as if he were already wont. xP